Venom is still breathing. Not in the comic book way, where he’s been killed off and resurrected on a loop since the Clinton administration, but in the much more precarious way of a video game that leaked before anyone announced it and has since spent months being pronounced dead by the internet.
A fresh update on X suggests otherwise.
What NateTheHate said
Insider NateTheHate tackled the speculation directly: “Venom is very much still in development upon last check. As to when it’ll be announced, I don’t know.”
That’s the whole tease. And it did the job, because Forbes and NateTheHate are now aligned on the same message following a stretch of this year in which cancellation was the default assumption.
Context is everything here. Insomniac’s Marvel’s Venom was swept up in the studio’s 2023 mega-leak, meaning fans have been aware of this project for longer than they were aware of plenty of games that have already shipped.
The announcement nobody needs
One fan summed up the strangeness of it all better than any headline: “The funniest part about this game is that we’ve known it exists for so long that the official announcement is basically going to be a formality.”
Hard to argue. The reveal trailer is shaping up to be a press release set to orchestral music.
The platform question hasn’t gone down as smoothly. Apparently overlooking the fact that Insomniac belongs to Sony, at least one fan weighed in on the PS5 exclusivity: “Devs need to wise up and make games multi-platform, not just Sony. Unless they like sitting around with no sales.”
Why the wait makes sense
Spider-Man: The Great Web is no more. That was the “All-Star”-style title built around a roster of Web Warriors, and its cancellation freed up considerable runway.
At the same time, Insomniac is deep in the launch push for Wolverine, with the possibility of DLC that folds in other storylines. Putting every available hand on that before kicking off the Venom hype cycle is the obvious move.
So Venom sits tight. Fans, for their part, have said they’re fine waiting — a degree of patience the average comment section rarely grants anything.
Don’t count on a PC port
A number of Marvel’s Spider-Man titles have made the jump to PC. That window appears to be shut. Sony looks finished with PC ports altogether, and several of its big published titles simply aren’t making the trip, Ghost of Yotei and Saros among them.
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls looks to be the final entry in that run, and only thanks to agreements struck beforehand.
The character earned this
Venom stopped being a Spider-Man accessory a long time ago. Ever since the ’90s and one of his earliest outings in Lethal Protector, he’s maintained anti-hero standing on his own terms, and fans have remained hooked on him for decades in that messy way that never fully settles.
The symbiote suit has passed through no shortage of hosts besides Eddie Brock. Marvel’s Spider-Man ran with that idea, putting Venom in players’ hands for a stretch while also giving Peter a turn with the symbiote.
A Venom-heavy romp, and an unfinished one at that. The standalone game remains in development, remains unannounced, and remains right where the leak left it, out in the open.